Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The REAL Halloween

After picking out the perfect pumpkin with intentions of carving something awesome into it, I got lazy and decided not to carve this year after all...

until....

I read on the flashy roadside sign of our apartment complex about a pumpkin carving contest open to residents.

A contest? A pumpkin carving contest?

I'm IN!!

(You of course know by now how competitive I am.)

So there I was, 4:30 in the afternoon on Halloween Sunday, scooping and cleaning that huge pumpkin, bits and seeds flying everywhere, and Paige in a complete tizzy about the mess.

"But MOM! You're getting it everywhere! Ewww!"

Can you believe I carved this pumpkin, from untouched to lit candle in 30 minutes? I downloaded a template, cut open and cleaned out the guts, traced the pattern, and carved the image into my gorgeous perfect pumpkin in, I promise you, no more than 30 minutes.

My secret? An electric pumpkin carving knife.

Like a hot knife through butter. Look for one next year at your local grocery store. This $5 tool will revolutionize the way you carve pumpkins!

(Alas, I panicked and carved for naught. In my frenzied overly competitive mind, what I thought read "Don't forget to put our your pumpkins for the trick or treat contest" really said, "Don't forget to put out your pumpkins for the trick or treaters" on the apartment complex billboard.

Oops. Oh, well! I still got to use my cool new tool!)

Despite hearing rumors that trick-or-treating on base was a blast, we decided to hang out with our apartment people and "bond" with our neighbors.

The deal was, if a resident was wanting to participate in trick-or-treating they were to attach a paper pumpkin cutout the apartment staff provided to their door as a sign for the kids.

By 7 pm we had not had one doorbell ring despite our pumpkin hanging proudly on the door and a giant bowl full of DumDums.

Well, if they won't come to us, we'll go to them!

The first few minutes really sucked because we were about the only ones trick-or-treating. It was lonely, quiet, and kind of depressing. And there were preciously few pumpkins hanging on people's doors, the giant party poopers.

But eventually it became a fun game to run ahead looking for pumpkins and getting excited when someone yelled, "OVER HERE! THERE'S ONE OVER HERE!"

The kids would scramble to the door and hold out their bags as the lonely candy hucksters piled fists full of candy into their bags.

Overall we had a really fun Halloween, the real Halloween, night. And if you can measure the success of a Halloween by how much candy you receive, then we ended up winners after all!